Robinson's Hood

December 15, 2012
The first in a planned series is slight in length as well as in concept. Robin--short for Robinson--lives with his grandmother "on the toughest street in the toughest hood in the tough city of Ironwood." Devoted to school and to his grandmother, he spends his days outside school at the Barbara Jordan Community Center and helping out at his gramma's Shrimp Shack. Although readers may relate to the bullying and gang violence Robin encounters, they will most likely not swallow his teacher's-pet narrative voice ("He'd already done his summer reading, an amazing novel called Bud, Not Buddy...and written a great five-paragraph essay too"). His lack of street smarts is similarly unbelievable: Even readers who aren't skeptical when Robin cheerfully asks the local bully, "You all ready for school?" will surely struggle when, out of just slightly more than idle curiosity, Robin goes to a spot where he sees a gang member hiding something and finds almost exactly enough money to save the Center from closing. An abrupt cliffhanger leaves the story completely unresolved, but with so many flaws, it's hard to imagine there will be much clamoring for the follow-up volume. Misses the mark almost completely. (Fiction. 10-14)

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January 1, 2013
Grades 5-8 In this reluctant-reader-ready series opener, 14-year-old Robin feels squeezed at every turn. At school, two bullies force him to write their essays for them. At home, Gramma is paying out money she doesn't have to keep her business, the Shrimp Shack, from being ransacked by the local gang, the Ninth Street Rangers. The only place where Robin feels safe, the local community center, is about to be shut down unless $25,000 can be raised in a week. It's a dire situation all around until Robin spies a gang member hiding a package. Robin digs it out only to find $25,000 in cash. So there's one problem solved by taking from the evil rich and giving to the deserving poorso why not another problem? Though the abrupt plot developments strain credulity at times, Gottesfeld has a firm grip on urban anxieties and sprinkles his accelerated prose with effective vernacular: When I talk wit' yo' boy, it won't happen no mo'. This is a quick read, so have the two simultaneously published sequels, Chopped and The Bank of Badness, ready to roll.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)